


Never Enough Conversation

by Kiarawolf



Category: Best Friends Forever (Webcomic)
Genre: #bffcomic, #tencent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 14:34:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3491933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiarawolf/pseuds/Kiarawolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(spoilers for those not up to current chapter (22))<br/>The first night after Penelope breaks up with him, Teddy finds himself crashing at Vincent's house. The second night, he lays awake, wondering why he can't sleep...<br/>(note: this fic totally ignores the upcoming ski-trip, but seeing as Never Enough Luck was completely about that I think I'm okay :P)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Enough Conversation

**Author's Note:**

> All characters belong to Mickey Quinn of http://goknights.tumblr.com/  
> No profit is being made

Never Enough Conversation.

By Kiarawolf 

30.01.2015

  It takes until the dead middle of the night for Teddy to realise what’s missing. He’s been dozing for what feels like hours, his eyes shut but his mind refusing to quiet down. Every time he starts to feel sleep pulling him in, something snatches his thoughts back to wakefulness.

  Eventually, he’s all but given up. He stares at the ceiling, smothering yawns, tracing the outlines of each continent on the world map tapped to his roof. He finds an island that looks like a dinosaur just above Australia and a slinking cat in Scandinavia. And there’s a long country that looks just like a lock of Penelope’s hair, curled slightly at the bottommost tip… But he doesn’t want to think about her, or rather, their non-relationship relationship. Which is why he went to Vincent’s last night; a smart idea, for Teddy had enjoyed one of the best night’s rests he’d had in a while.

  And now, tonight… It must be too quiet here. At Vincent’s house the pipes gurgle at all hours and the next-door motor-way never closes. If Teddy had enjoyed good sleep there, then now, back in his own bed, back in his own house, the lack of background noise must be at blame for his lack of rest. Or maybe he’s missing Vincent’s singing? It was a lovely way to fall asleep…

  Before he even realises what he’s doing, Teddy rises out of bed and shuffles, blanket around his shoulders like a fluffy cape, over to his desk. He grabs the Ipod sitting on charge there, and fishes for his earphones in the top draw.

  Back in bed, earphones in and the first few guitar cords playing quietly, Teddy actually finds himself blushing. He knows he has no reason to, as Vincent gave him the recording as a gift just last year, and how is it inappropriate to listen to a song someone gave you? Only Teddy isn’t listening to it while studying, or in the car, like Vincent probably expected him to, he’s laying here in the dark in the middle of the night, closing his eyes as his best friend starts to sing.

  Most of the song isn’t that inappropriate: _You can chase him_ _down to his den, you can steal his feastin’ hen, but listen here, listen oh. This fox ’ain’t no grass grazer_ _…_ But when the chorus clicks in and Vincent’s voice falls into some deeper emotion, singing: _I love you so, little fox, little fox_ , Teddy becomes painfully aware of how intimate it all feels.

  The next day, Teddy leaves his phone in Vincent’s coat. He drives over to pick it up, but ends up staying for a movie and by the end of that he finds he is tired enough to just sleep right there on the couch, so he does.

  He half-way wakes when Vincent carries him in to his bed, but Vincent hums one of the show-tunes from the musical they watched while hunting for his pyjamas, and so by the time he joins Teddy on the thin mattress, Teddy has already fallen back asleep.

  The next night he turns up on Vincent’s doorstep wearing a nightrobe and with a sleep mask pushed up onto his head like some pair of night-sunglasses. ‘I, uh…’ he says, ‘I must have left my retainer here, I couldn’t find it at home.’

  A quick search of Vincent’s bathroom uncovers the item in question. Retainer in hand, Teddy starts heading back towards the front door. ‘You know,’ Vincent’s voice stops him, ‘you’re, uh, welcome to crash… it’s a long drive, and, um…’

  Teddy tries to sound casual. ‘Yeah, that would be great actually. I’m rather tired.’ They move into Vincent’s room, and Vincent hurriedly gathers together a bunch of sheet music that’s spread over his bed. Teddy notices the guitar lying abandoned on the sole chair. ‘If you were in the middle of something, don’t stop on my account.’

‘Oh, yeah I was just playing around a bit with a song, but – like, I was pretty much finished, so…’

‘Vincent, come on, I’d love to hear it.’

‘Okay, uh… let me just –’ he finds the right piece of music from among his hastily-gathered pile, and gets himself settled on the chair as Teddy makes himself comfortable on the bed. ‘Well, this one’s a bit… I’m still working on the lyrics, so…’ without much more preamble, Vincent starts to coax the guitar.

  _This one’s a lot sadder than Little Fox_ , Teddy thinks. He drifts off listening to Vincent singing, pausing, re-trying a certain phrase, starting again with an added chord…

  The next night, Teddy gets a call at ten past eleven. ‘Hey Teddy, um… my shift just finished, and now… ah, my car’s broken down…’ Teddy drives out to the service station where Vincent works. ‘I don’t want to inconvenience you too much, buddy. Yours is way closer, we can just go there.’

‘Are you sure, Vincent? Don’t you need your books for school, or…?’

‘Nah, they’re all in the car. It opens, just… doesn’t start. I’ll get a mechanic on it tomorrow, but right now – I’m so beat, dude.’

  Teddy’s house has a hundred spare rooms. There is no plausible reason for him to wake up the next morning, nose almost touching the neck of his best friend, sheets tangled from tossing in the night. ‘We fell asleep watching a movie,’ Teddy announces to his father, who is giving the pair of them knowing looks as they trail into breakfast together. Actually, they were talking, and just sort of slipped further and further down the pillows until the cold drove them under the blankets, but Vincent doesn’t correct him.

  In the nights that follow, the excuses grow weaker. ‘All my sheets are – um, Mum threw them in the wash, but…’ ‘Vincent, I simply insist. You will fail geography if I don’t come and knock some countries into that winsome head of yours.’ ‘Teddy, do you think I could… with that test tomorrow and all, you know how the trucks keep me awake…’ ‘Damn it Vincent, I put all my stuff in a pile so I wouldn’t forget anything again, but your Mum must have moved stuff around because I can’t find my brown coat… I’ll just come and get it…’

  There reaches a point where the excuses stop being voiced altogether. Where Teddy keeps a toothbrush in Vincent’s bathroom and Vincent has quasi-ownership of one half of Teddy’s bed. Teddy tries not to look too closely at what that means.

  Some things, however, are hard to ignore.

  Like waking up one morning with his arm strung over Vincent’s waist. _He’s probably fast asleep,_ Teddy thinks, _probably hasn’t even noticed_ _…_ But Teddy has spent enough time falling asleep around Vincent that he can tell when the other boy is awake and when he is not, and he is almost certain that right now Vincent’s pattern of breathing is rather too regular, and the stillness of his body is rather too ridged. Teddy pretends to be asleep himself, and manages to pull his arm away by rolling over.

  The next night they are at Vincent’s house. They are about to get into bed before they decide to chase eachother through the house, shrieking like five year olds and tickling any captives mercilessly. In the end, Teddy finds himself pinning Vincent to his own bed. He makes a half-hearted attempt at tickling the larger boy’s sides and then gives the game up with an exhausted slump. He lies atop Vincent’s torso with his head resting on the other boy’s neck, wondering how long he can plausibly stay here.

  Tentatively, Vincent’s arms place themselves around Teddy, his hands resting on his back. They seem to be shaking, but as the long moments drag past and neither boy moves, the hands still themselves. They lay like that for such a long time that the pair start to drift towards drowsiness. At some point, Teddy slides off of Vincent’s chest and onto the mattress, but he keeps his head on the other boy’s shoulder and an arm around his waist, and Vincent doesn’t move them.

  The next night, after the lights are out, a game of footsie under the covers ensures they end up one half-atop the other, and Vincent draws small circles on Teddy’s back while he sings Little Fox.

  After that, Vincent’s hesitation evaporates. He seems to touch Teddy at every opportunity. Before, Vincent had dared little more than messing up Teddy’s hair at the end of lunch, or slinging an arm around the passenger seat as he drove; now, Vincent will bump Teddy’s knee under the table, and rest his head in his lap while studying, and even play with his toes while they watch movies.

  A week of cuddling ensures, of warmth on winter nights, of circles on skin, of fingers combing hair in the dark and sappy songs sung by Vincent to put them to sleep. And then the inevitable. ‘Teddy, uh, maybe we should – talk – or…’

‘I’d rather not, Vincent.’

  And just like that, the confidence in Vincent’s touch disappears, the contagious grin becomes a puzzled frown, the nights become a chorus of ‘sorry dude’ for every accidental brush of feet, and back is Vincent’s hesitant politeness, ‘should I pull out my sleeping bag?’ ‘should I put my bag in the guest room?’ ‘Is it alright if I sleep without my shirt, uh, I only brought one…’ and back are the feelings that Teddy was running away from with every midnight embrace, that Teddy was trying not to think about every time he hid his face in Vincent’s chest, and back is the summer.

  The summer.

  The thing that never happened.

  Teddy knows that, never happened or not, it’s sitting between them every night, a moat of unbridgeable space that’s going to change it all, going to make them or break them. He doesn’t know which and he doesn’t want to have to choose.

  He suspects they’re breaking. He walks into Vincent’s kitchen one day to find him sobbing on the bench, and the series of expressions on his face once he notices Teddy, from shock to resentment to resignation, proves to Teddy that the tears aren’t there because of the half-cut onion, or maybe they only started that way.

  And then Vincent begins to go missing for a few hours at a time, not answering his phone, not clocked in at any of his jobs, refusing to tell Teddy where’s his been when he climbs into bed, always freshly showered, sometimes limping slightly. Those few hours seem to have an intense influence on Vincent’s mood. He may come back relaxed and optimistic, or he may be tenser than before, unable to even look Teddy in the eye. Sometimes, rarely, he will settle himself behind Teddy and, without even a word, enfold him in his arms, touching his hands and holding tight to his fingers with a quiet desperation that cares nothing for the carefully-clarified permission he usually seeks; although Teddy knows that he only has to say ‘stop’ or ‘don’t’ or ‘Vincent…’ and Vincent will draw away, never to touch so confidently again.

  So Teddy doesn’t say anything. He lies still, letting the warmth enfold him. He closes his eyes and listens to Vincent’s breathing. He tries to tell himself that Vincent is hurting, right now, and that maybe he can sooth some of that if he can just force himself to face it all, to hold the whole situation in his mind and come to some decision; he thinks about Vincent’s face when he sleeps, and he thinks about Penelope telling him he’s not ready for her, and he thinks about that time during the summer when Vincent leant close enough to taste…

  And he shrugs himself out of Vincent’s arms, heading to the bathroom for lack of anywhere better to go. Because why is it only Vincent who gets to be angry, who gets to mope and disappear?

  He wonders if this whole winter, this episode of sharing beds for over a month, will eventually be something that sits unspoken between them. That night we didn’t kiss in the summer, meet the nights and nights and nights on end that we didn’t kiss in the winter.

  They’d come close, of course. Lips so near it was hard to breathe, noses touching, eyes darting every which-way, a nervous smile and a hesitation that draws on and on and that neither dares to break. _Stop waiting for me,_ Teddy wants to say, _because if you do then we’ll be laying here until our skeletons turn to dust._

  But Vincent does. He waits and he waits and Teddy feels the balls rolling into his court, one after the other until he’s almost suffocated by them, but still he can’t pick up even one and throw it back, not until he knows where’s he’s throwing it, not until he knows which decision he’s even making.

  Clear communication. That’s something they should probably give a try, but even the thought of talking… of having that conversation… it sends spasms of anxiety straight to Teddy’s stomach. What would he even say? _Vincent, hi, you’re my only real friend and the thought of loosing you physically hurts, so please lets just stay what we are, whatever we are right now, and yes, I am inlovewithyou but I was dealing with it much better before you tried to kiss me, and I’m even more messed up now that we’re spooning in our sleep. Vincent why are you doing that? You’re straight and you’re dating Kamri. Do you pity me? Are you just_ _…_ _affectionate? But then, sometimes I think that just maybe_ _…_ _the way you look at me_ _…_ _I don’t even want to go there because, Vincent, Penelope was right; I’m not ready for anything like that, I’m not good enough for anyone like you. I’m a mess and half, Vincent._

  He would never be able to take it back. Everything would change.

  But things are changing anyway. The casual friendship they enjoyed upon first meeting is long gone, the tentative truce after the summer fiasco well and truly faded. And now their snuggly, unspoken nights are crumbling.

  But Teddy only has to look at John, John strolling down the hallways at school, John refusing to look at him, John the young boy in his memory who said ‘lets play Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter!’ and then, as he grew up, forgot to stop playing. Teddy only has to look at Penelope, Penelope who said ‘you’re cute, I like you,’ but who said ‘we’ve had some fun’ when she realised just what a trouble-ball Teddy is, just how much effort goes into keeping him going, just how much work was required for her little doses of fun, and she said ‘you should sort yourself out first,’ and left. And Teddy only has to look at his Dad, his Dad who expects so much but gives so little… One look at any of these people reminds him how important Vincent is, how no matter what silly crush is plaguing him, no matter how much Teddy wishes he just knew, for certain, for once and for all, if those sideways looks mean anything at all… no matter what, Teddy will not put his friendship with Vincent at risk. There are more important things than kisses, and for Teddy it’s the way Vincent always answers his calls. There are more important things than dates, and for Teddy it’s the way Vincent can read him so well, can tell that something is up or that something is wrong and will be there for him. There are more important things than the chance at a perfect relationship, and for Teddy it’s the guarantee of a perfect friendship.

  So he will wait. Till their skeletons turn to dust.

  Or a naked picture of Louis appears on Vincent’s phone screen one night, while Vincent is in the shower, and Teddy scrolls up through their messages. And walks out the house. And busts back in again, a thousand expletives on his tongue. And runs back out, and keeps running even though he can barely see a meter in front of him, his eyes are so blurry with tears. Louis? _Louis!?_ The ramifications roll around his head, crashing into eachother and exploding, the shards ripping like glass straight though his heart.

  _It has to be just sex,_ he thinks, which is still a gut punch because he knew the ‘just sex’ was going on, sure, he just thought it was with Kamri or Bianca or Charlie or… any other female because the Vincent he knows is straight as a board. Isn’t he? And then; _the missing hours_. And suddenly he wants to vomit because Vincent must have been coming back to his bed after hooking up with Louis – _but he did come back to my bed, at least –_ and Vincent acting like a housewife having an affair makes perfect, horrible sense because Vincent and Teddy aren’t together, not exactly, but there’s an unspoken couple-hood in their midnight cuddling, and here Vincent is sneaking away for something on the side.

  That night as they settle down for bed, Teddy asks; ‘did you want to… um, talk?’ and the way he says ‘talk’ has Vincent sitting up.

‘I thought um… you’ve never wanted to before?’

  It takes Teddy a long time to find the courage to answer. ‘I was too scared of change. Vincent, you’re the most important person in the world to me. If I stuff you up…’

‘Um, same dude – and you know nothing you could say would ever… or could do even, I’m here for you regardless, you know?’

‘That… thankyou, Vincent. I want us to always be best friends, at the very least.’

  Vincent’s eyes widen. ‘The… least?’

‘Well, for more, you’ll have to stop seeing Louis.’

  The silence is suffocating, and then Vincent scrambles for words and the correct emotion. ‘What? How did you? And I’d love to– ’

‘Your phone was on the bed,’ Teddy whispers, motioning to the glowing-screened culprit.

‘Pass it here.’

  Teddy hands it over and Vincent does some frantic typing. ‘ _Louis_ ,’ Vincent reads out-loud, ‘ _thanks for the fun but I won’t be seeing you again_. There, sent.’ His eyes snap to Teddy’s as the phone drops from his fingers, and Teddy notices that those fingers are shaking as the reach towards his face, and once there trace a slow line down his cheek to his jaw… Teddy closes his eyes to the touch, leaning in, and the next moment he feels lips on his own and it’s as if an explosion has taken place in his stomach, a latent build-up of emotion and almost-kisses that blasts him with happiness and disbelieving awe.

  A new message light’s up Vincent’s phone. It’s from Louis: _i’ll b seeing u @ school, idiot._

  Another follows in quick succession: _but yea, i get it. guess Ted found sum balls._

  For a good few hours, the boys are too busy to even notice those messages.

 


End file.
